It’s January. It is cold, and it will be several more weeks before even the earliest daffodils actually blooms... but I’m still celebrating life. The sky reminds me that life, though it might mean wretchedness and hard work, it is a pleasant thing and worth the having.
I'm standing by the window looking outside. There are sparrows hopping about on the wet ground, picking up seeds and insects; it is obvious they’re oblivious to fear, or the return of the terrible Plectranthus.
Indeed, Plectranthus has kept coming to the garden all winter. His powerful eyes scan the garden as he flies and scurries among the grasses and shrubbery looking for a meal. The other day a battle took place right here, right between earth and sky. I heard a loud thumps as a little sparrow, in his haste to escape the hawk’s deadly weapons flew into the window and landed on the porch. Spotting it, the hawk swooped downward, and finally carried his meal home. It became rather calm and quiet then and the small birds continued trying to empty our feeders until dusk.
Nature might go about forever in deep weeds and mourning if she took the trouble to lament about the weather; so I should do the same and go on smiling... smiling smiling though all morning, the rain has been pelting the windows, making our already-dark, north-facing little house almost as dark as night. Why should the sky not be clouded and the birds fly home hungry, because in one small house a fairy cries for the sparrows and years for the sun?
P.G. Wodehouse--"She's one of those soppy girls, riddled from head to foot with whimsy. She holds the view that the stars are God's daisy chain, that rabbits are gnomes in attendance on the Fairy Queen, and that every time a fairy blows its wee nose a baby is born, which, as we know, is not the case. "
